Chapter 340

“So where are you now?”

Baekgyeong hesitated over whether to tell Baeksang the truth. In the end, he decided to be honest.

“Maryland.”

—Maryland?

“I’m driving up from Helso State to New York. I can’t take a plane right now.”

—Are people chasing you?

“Well, something like that. There’s information I’m looking for too.”

—This is frustrating. How about answering a little more honestly?

Baeksang paused to steady his breath. Though he was trying to suppress it, impatience bled through his voice.

Baekgyeong asked himself whether, if he were to disappear, he would want his brother to dig through his trail and solve the incident. The answer was no.

“You don’t need to know. Stay out of it, bookworm.”

At Baekgyeong’s prickly reply, Baeksang answered in a weary voice, as if he lacked even the energy to be angry.

—You can’t handle this alone. Let me take care of it.

“Just worry about your company.”

Baeksang took a deep breath, clearly preparing to lose his temper, then forcibly calmed himself. Speaking as if trying to reason with him, he said:

—I already lost Mother. I can’t lose you too.

Baekgyeong’s words caught in his throat. Deep down, he believed himself unworthy of such concern from his brother. The original cause that had made their mother a target was that Baekgyeong had been born a defective existence.

If he had not been born carrying the body of his dead twin inside his own, their mother would never have made such a dangerous choice to save her son.

Baekgyeong accepted this thought plainly, without self-contempt or pity. Because of that, he could ask his brother with pure curiosity:

“Don’t you resent me?”

Choi Baekhui had been Baekgyeong’s mother, but she had also been Baeksang’s mother. After a brief silence, Baeksang replied calmly, without a trace of humor.

—Stop talking nonsense and come home immediately.

Though Baekgyeong had not intended it, he ended up sounding like a spoiled youngest brother seeking recognition from his older sibling. He had always lived as though he needed no one’s hand, yet he too was someone’s blood relative with a home to return to.

At that moment Baekgyeong realized he had forgotten something. He abruptly raised his head.

“Hyung. There’s something important I need to tell you.”

Baekgyeong spoke solemnly.

“In two days, a bad-tempered woman will show up at Stonecreek Psychiatric Hospital driving a bus. They’re guests I sent, so tell the hospital director to hide them well.”

—...What are you talking about?

Hearing hesitation in his brother’s voice — something that rarely happened — made Baekgyeong feel oddly pleased. He laughed silently.

“I can’t explain right now. Just take care of the bad-tempered woman and Daniel.”

After resolving the contact with his brother — a task that had felt like homework — Baekgyeong returned to the restaurant feeling noticeably lighter. Humming quietly as he approached the table, he slowed his steps when he sensed the unusual atmosphere between Siron and Isaac. The two were staring at a phone.

Sitting beside Siron, Baekgyeong leaned close to his ear and whispered:

“What are you looking at?”

“The internet.”

Baekgyeong leaned back in his chair with a knowing look and picked up a cold fry.

“Any new news about the Rut Suppressant?”

“The Baggers City Police Commissioner died.”

The answer was completely unrelated to his question. Baekgyeong put the fry he had been about to eat back onto the plate.

“The commissioner?”

“Yeah. Angus Stone.”

Baekgyeong could not immediately recall Angus Stone’s appearance. The police commissioner ranked very low on his list of interests.

“How do you intend to atone for that sin, hmm? ...I don’t want to add any more sins here.”

Baekgyeong suddenly remembered Angus Stone’s voice, whining that he did not want to add more sins.

“I remember. Anna planted a bug in the commissioner’s car.”

They had intercepted that bug and listened to the recording without the owner’s permission. Through it they had learned what kind of situation Stone was in. Stone had maintained an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl under the pretext of sponsorship, and Hybris had used the video recorded at the time to blackmail him. They held him by the throat. He was a man obsessed with power while simultaneously tormented by deep guilt and self-loathing.

“It didn’t seem like the commissioner was working hand in hand with the governor. It felt more like he was reluctantly following the governor’s orders.”

Baekgyeong continued.

“Did he try to expose Hybris? Maybe that’s why he was killed.”

Baekgyeong offered several guesses based on the fragments of information he knew, but neither Siron nor Isaac responded.

“What exactly are you looking at on the internet?”

Disappointed, Baekgyeong leaned forward to see the phone screen. A familiar face filled the display. During the weeks he had been trapped on an island in the Gulf of Mexico with a bomb strapped helplessly around his neck, it was a face he had seen again and again. And after returning to Baggers City, he had seen the same man again in the governor’s garage, his ear severed, his appearance grotesque.

Baekgyeong took the phone from Siron’s hand and began reading the post from the beginning. It was a forum thread titled “Why Angus Stone’s Suicide Deserves No Sympathy.” The post exposed how Angus Stone had framed victims with false charges in order to cover up the rape and violence committed by his son, Ted Stone.

“That bastard Ted Stone didn’t stop at just one crime.”

Staring at the young faces of the victims now serving prison sentences, Baekgyeong placed the phone back on the table with a sour expression.

“Think Ted Stone died trapped in the drainage tunnel too?”

Siron folded his arms.

“Probably.”

“How would you know?”

“He was with Lewis. When we escaped Somora Prison, the ones who kidnapped me from the sea were Lewis and Ted Stone.”

Both Baekgyeong and Isaac stared at Siron in surprise. Since reuniting in the drainage tunnels, Siron had never mentioned this once.

“Lewis kidnapped you into the drainage tunnel?”

Siron rolled his eyes as if searching his memory. Then his mouth closed, his expression turning uncomfortable, like someone suffering from indigestion.

“He must’ve read the [N O V E L I G H T] Trait Manifesto... and been impressed by it. That’s probably why he brought me to Hybris.”

“Are you saying Lewis was brainwashed?”

“No. Not now. He’s definitely free of it.”

Siron nodded confidently, but then hesitated as if unconvinced by his own words and corrected himself with a troubled expression.

“Actually... I don’t know.”

He muttered darkly.

“I don’t know what Lewis went through there. But he tried to save me. He failed before he could even try.”

The image of Lewis screaming desperately in the drainage tunnel as Alpha faced death overlapped with the Lewis who had casually handed Siron over to Hybris before.

Lewis was no longer the man Siron had once known. Like a mist — faint yet undeniably real — he remained within Hybris’s sphere of influence. Not wanting to talk about him any further, Siron changed the subject.

“Anyway, I think the commissioner’s death might be related to the drainage tunnel incident. If Ted Stone died in the tunnel, maybe he jumped out of grief after losing his son.”

Baekgyeong added another possibility.

“Or maybe the commissioner decided to expose everything about Hybris and became a target because of it.”

The place where the commissioner jumped was also suspicious. It was an offline community used by Alpha in Baggers City. A prostitution space existed there where homeless people were injected with fake pheromones and soaked in cheap drugs that amplified sexual sensation to satisfy Alpha’s desires. It was one of the secret places that could never be exposed to the public.

Whether suicide or murder, the drainage tunnel incident had undoubtedly influenced the commissioner’s death.

By then time had passed, and the moment to meet Malcolm Knox was fast approaching.

They drove the short distance — less than five hundred meters from the restaurant — to the meeting place. The entire block had entered redevelopment, leaving the area deserted and filled with a bleak atmosphere.

Baekgyeong did not stop the car. Instead he pressed the accelerator and drove past the meeting spot naturally. As planned beforehand, they would wait elsewhere until Malcolm Knox appeared. They intended to minimize exposure until they were certain there was no danger.

While monitoring the road through the side mirror, Baekgyeong suddenly spoke as if remembering something.

“Starting tomorrow, things are going to get pretty noisy.”

Siron, sitting uncomfortably on the floor of the back seat, asked:

“Noisy? What’s happening now?”

“Vile Group is submitting the Clinical Trial authorization for the Rut Suppressant. They’re planning to announce it to the media at the same time.”

Isaac, who had been watching outside the passenger window, turned toward Baekgyeong. He frowned as if displeased.

“...It certainly will become noisy.”

“What exactly will happen?” Siron asked.

Isaac considered briefly before speaking quietly.

“The moment Vile Group submits the authorization request to the FDA, the existence of Alpha will be officially raised. If it’s acknowledged that a new human group previously unknown exists, the world will certainly fall into confusion. It won’t be good news for Hybris either. Their past traces could be traced back. Of course, if the U.S. government denies the existence of Trait Holders, the situation may change.”

Siron leaned forward between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, asking anxiously:

“Will Baeksang hyung be okay?”

Remembering that Chairwoman Choi Baekhui had been murdered just before submitting the Clinical Trial authorization, Siron’s face filled with concern.

“He’ll push forward even if it’s dangerous. He’s determined enough to name the suppressant CHOI.”

Come to think of it, the Rut Suppressant’s name was CHOI. Siron had thought it sounded strange for a drug name, but it was taken from Chairwoman Choi Baekhui’s surname.

“More importantly, people will want it. The manufacturing method for the suppressant was released as open source from the start for their sake.”

Alpha and their families would not simply ignore the manufacturing method for the Rut Suppressant spreading online. Instead of the trouble of physically relieving their rut themselves, they now had the option of enduring it smoothly with a single drug.

But the Rut Suppressant was not something ordinary people could easily make at home. It required facilities at least on the scale of a university research laboratory. Naturally, people would begin seeking commercially produced versions.

As long as demand for the suppressant existed, the process of explaining its existence would inevitably bring the concept of Alpha into public discussion. In the end, the world would learn that Alpha existed.

Siron wondered how humanity would accept Alpha — beings reborn from the brink of death, physically evolved, yet also inferior to humans because they were born with rut cycles and short lifespans.